


The Beast Tamer

by lorspolairepeluche



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Animal whisperer Inquisitor, Animals, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Hedge Mage Inquisitor, Rating subject to change, Shapeshifting, and noa and blackwall are gonna get Frisky later, theres gonna be some - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-29
Updated: 2017-06-28
Packaged: 2018-11-20 18:01:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11340546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lorspolairepeluche/pseuds/lorspolairepeluche
Summary: She calls herself an animal trainer. She's much more than that, and she will become even more.





	The Beast Tamer

On their own, the various animals crossing the Frostbacks might not have been strange. But together, and with a cloaked, upright figure leading them, the procession made for a very uncommon sight.

A falcon fluttered down with a soft call, and the hooded figure looked up and raised an arm to allow the bird to land. She pushed back her hood and pulled down the cowl around her face. “Hey, Heru. What did you see?”

The falcon let out a quick series of shreeing cries, _klee klee klee_ , flapping its wings excitedly, and its handler nodded, bringing her hand up to allow the bird to hop onto her shoulder. “We’re almost there, Benno,” she assured the bear walking beside her, rubbing behind one of its ears.

Benno grumbled back, and his person smiled sympathetically, glancing at the many smaller animals hitching a ride on Benno’s back. “None of you want to let Benno have a break?”

The white cat with a brown face looked up at her human, then disdainfully down at the snow, then curled back up on the bear’s back. The fluffy orange tabby, though, hopped off the bear into the snow, stepping carefully in the human’s footprints to catch up to her.

The human crouched and rubbed his head as best she could with her mittened hand. “Thank you, Smiley, on Benno’s behalf.” She stood back up and shivered, eyes fixed on the indeterminate, irregular shape in the distance. The snow had stopped falling, leaving a blanket of white on the mountains and a clear shot at their destination.

“Almost there,” the human repeated, and pulled up her cowl to push on.

—

The animals didn’t scatter when the temple was consumed by a green explosion, nor when the tear in the sky widened above them. The bear didn’t move, didn’t leave the smaller animals taking shelter in his curled-up mass to freeze. The wolf kept his eyes on the rip in the air, on the unearthly figures pouring from it. The hawk, the falcon, and the raven took turns circling, the two dogs prowling, keeping watch.

She was alive, and she had told them to stay together and to keep each other safe until she came back.

—

She didn’t like being alone. She’d never _been_ alone. Mama and Babae had never been far, at least not until she got her first pets and Mama recognized them for what they were. Mama called them her “familiars,” which made sense to the little girl. She was intimately familiar with her animals. After that, it had been the animals who never let her out of their sight. She always had at least one or two with her, when hunting or harvesting or sleeping. When she was cooking, they surrounded her, waiting expectantly, never accepting the explanation of “people food” until each of them got a bite.

But now she was alone. Sure, there were people, but none of them trusted her. She wished she’d at least let Nigel the ferret or Telida the weasel curl up in her cowl when she entered that temple. But she’d been wary; she’d never been around that many mages or templars before, and she didn’t want to bring anything that would attract attention to her. So Nigel and Telida had stayed with the others, and she’d gone in alone.

And then the sky had torn open, and she had fallen out of it.

“What is your name?” the elf—Solas—asked as they started down into the valley. He had a soothing tone to his voice. It made her trust him—at least, more than she trusted the brusque human with the eye on her armor.

“Noa,” she answered. “Noa Pendragon.”

The dwarf—Varric Tethras, rogue, storyteller, and occasionally unwelcome tagalong, as he’d introduced himself—laughed for the third time since she’d known him. She wondered if it was a defense mechanism. “ _Pen_ dragon? You’re not a writer, are you?”

“No; I’m an animal trainer.”

“You are far more than that,” the woman with the sword muttered. Noa didn’t argue. Wasn’t usually a good idea to argue with people with swords, especially not people as testy as this Cassandra woman, and not with a Breach in the sky.

Something tugged at her. Some little thing clicked back into alignment in her mind. Finally, something felt right.

“Wait!” Cassandra shouted as Noa suddenly changed course and tore down another path, her feet plunging into knee-high snow. It didn’t hinder her, not when that feeling was getting stronger.

It wasn’t a feeling at all. It was a sound, and it was getting louder as Noa pounded toward it. She berated herself for not recognizing it sooner.

It was a wolf’s howl. There were other wolves in the area; she could hear them. But no wolf sounded like her wolf.

An expanse of snow lay beyond the narrow pass she’d run through, and she stopped just as the howl did. She raised her hands to cup her mouth and howled back. Her howl always sounded different from a real wolf’s, but that was just how he knew it was her.

“Pendragon!” The others had followed her, and Cassandra was facing to Noa’s left, sword out and ready to defend, eyes locked on something.

Noa whined, high in the back of her throat, and the thing Cassandra had seen bounded out of the trees at the edge of the expanse.

“Albus!” Noa threw her arms out to welcome him, and the wolf reared to hang his front paws over her shoulders and rest his muzzle on her head in a wolfish semblance of a hug.

“Albus, thank the Maker,” Noa breathed as she wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in the fur at Albus’s neck. “Where are the others?”

Albus dropped back down onto all fours and loped back the way he had come, and Noa followed him without a second thought.

“Pendragon!” Cassandra shouted after her, giving chase. “The rift!”

“My _family!_ ” Noa shouted back as she followed Albus into the trees.

Branches whipped at Noa’s face, dead and dormant undergrowth broke under her boots, but she kept her eyes on the fluffy grey-and-white tail as it wove through the trees. She heard loud, clumsy footsteps and muttered curses behind her and glanced back to see the other three following her and having a difficult time of it—at least in the case of Cassandra and Varric. And Noa thought _she_ was graceless compared to Albus.

The noise didn’t matter. It didn’t silence the call in her mind getting stronger with every step, nor Albus’s renewed howl.

The trees thinned, and Noa caught glimpses—something darting across her vision through the air, something bounding across the snow, far smaller than Albus—

She burst into a clearing and stopped with a cry of delight. She was answered by a multitude of sounds: the joyful braying of a bear chorusing with squeaks, piercing caws, and the barks of two dogs. Yet it was Smiley the orange tabby who met her first, his fluffy fur keeping him on top of the snow he traversed in bounds to meet her. Noa sank to her knees to catch him in her arms, just before Benno came in a close second, bowling her onto her back. He started licking at her face—and at an indignant Smiley—just as the three others arrived in the clearing, bewildered.

“There’s a story here,” Varric said, which Noa took to be as close to an expression of wonder as the dwarf normally got. Caila the mabari hound trotted up to investigate him, and he laughed, “You remind me of someone I know, pup!” as he scratched her head.

Solas gazed around at the myriad animals congregating around Noa, at Telida and Nigel wriggling their way through larger animals to curl up in their usual places in Noa’s cowl. Cassandra was less impressed as Marisa, Noa’s shaggy golden dog, sniffed at her scabbard. “Pendragon, what is…”

Noa grinned at Cassandra, upside-down, from where she still lay flat on her back with a bear nuzzling at her. “This is my family.”


End file.
